


Part the Dark, Crack the Sky

by Carrionflower



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Smut, Fenris and Hawke have trouble with boundaries, Friendship is Magic (literally), Garrett Hawke is a human-shaped golden retriever, M/M, Modern Thedas, Overprotective Fenris, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-05-22 06:41:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6069070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrionflower/pseuds/Carrionflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where magic is entirely unknown, Hawke discovers he can throw sparks like a live wire. The Templars are a ruthless force devoted to extinguishing magic by any means necessary; when they come after Hawke, Fenris is ready to dismantle the entire goddamn order to keep him safe. Modern AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I slapped an Explicit rating on here for future sauciness, even though the sauce is mild in the first few chapters.
> 
> Shout out to my beta Katie [[liluye](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mouselini)] for being a ray of sunshine and tolerating my 3am emails.

They were drunk, sitting in a messy half-circle on the plush rug of Varric's living room. _Turkish_ , Varric told them. _Handwoven and imported and grossly expensive._ It was also brand new. Hawke immediately spilled beer on it.

Sponging Guinness off the floor, Hawke asked, “Hey, want to see a trick?”

Merrill exclaimed that she did, and it sounded as though she'd never wanted anything more in her life, which was entirely possible. Isabela wanted whatever made Merrill happy, while Varric wanted an opportunity to make fun of Hawke, and Aveline did not care. Anders was in the galley kitchen, plating a fine selection of meats and cheeses (lunch meat and half a block of cheddar). Fenris was the final arbiter.

“Want to see a trick, Fenris?” Hawke asked again, his smile wide and goofy.

Fenris rolled his eyes. This was a _yes_ , and Hawke knew it, so he sat up on his haunches and beckoned Fenris closer. Heaving a put-upon sigh, Fenris obeyed and scooted forward until he was sitting between Hawke's knees.

“Watch,” Hawke said; then he rubbed his open palms vigorously on the carpet for several seconds. When he lifted his hands and hovered them over Fenris' head, the white hairs suddenly stood on end and followed Hawke's swaying movement like snakes to a snake charmer. Fenris' scalp tickled with static electricity.

Isabela snorted and took a picture.

“It's _alive,_ ” Hawke crowed in his best Colin Clive voice. (He'd watched _Frankenstein_ last week and had quoted that scene until Fenris threatened to revoke his television privileges.)

“I think the last time I saw someone do that trick,” Varric said, “was at my twelfth birthday party.”

“Was that also the year you stopped growing?” Hawke asked.

A beer-soaked wad of paper towels bounced off Hawke's head. After chiding Varric for throwing things, Merrill dropped to the floor beside Fenris. “Oh, will you do the trick to me?” she pleaded.

Enthusiastically, Hawke scrubbed his palms on the carpet again before grabbing Merrill's tiny wrist. The discharge of electricity was strong enough to be audible -- a very quiet _pop_ \-- and Merrill jumped, giggling and flapping her hand.

“How do you _do_ that?” she asked.

Hawke wiggled his fingers at her, grinning deviously. “Magic.”

 

\---

 

Two weeks later, Fenris lay sprawled on Hawke's threadbare couch while watching a shitty horror movie, his eyes heavy and legs numb. Henry -- Hawke's dog, a massive mutt with a barrel chest and sad eyes -- was draped over his knees and dreaming noisily.

Hawke himself was on the floor at the foot of the couch, typing away furiously on a laptop. Homework. He was dragging his feet through his final year of university and categorically did not bother to do homework unless he was teetering on the very edge of a deadline, which was why he was brewing coffee and sitting in a pile of scattered papers at 2am on a Thursday while Fenris kept him company.

Fenris was a grad student. He didn't really do his homework either, but that was neither here nor there.

“Fenris,” Hawke said in a very sad, small voice.

“What is it?” Fenris attempted to sit up but, trapped under the dog’s weight, he settled instead for shifting slightly to look at Hawke.

“This is the worst thing I've ever written and I still have twenty-four hundred words to go.”

“Edit it tomorrow.”

“It's _due_ tomorrow.”

Fenris raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” Hawke huffed. “I'm gonna... I need to just take a break and come back to it. With, you know, fresh eyes.”

“It's nearly three in the morning. You may need to reassess your standard of freshness.”

Hawke rose with a grimace, his joints popping. Immediately Henry was up too, launching himself off the couch with scrabbling paws, and sensation rushed back to Fenris' feet in pins and needles. Hawke disappeared into the kitchen.

“I'm making eggs,” he announced, sounding deeply morose.

Fenris laughed. He was used to the theatrics at this point -- he and Hawke had been friends for the better part of three years and, despite Fenris' best efforts, Hawke had neither driven him crazy nor allowed himself to be chased away. Fenris tended to behave in relationships as one does with a job they don't particularly like, performing only what was expected of him, accepting occasional social invitations and nodding along to his friends' stories, but he was not the kind of guy you'd ask to help you move. He'd long ago stopped feeling guilty for it. Fenris was simply happier when he was alone. It wasn't a good thing or a bad thing, it was just... a _thing_.

Hawke did not like to be alone, however; Fenris had learned that much over the course of their friendship. Hawke collected friends and strays and hangers-on. He knew everyone's name and everyone's story and he never said no when someone asked for a favor. That was Hawke: so extroverted that it made Fenris' teeth ache sometimes just to watch him interact with another human. Boundless energy, boundless goodwill. He was a caricature of himself.

But in these quiet moments, the private snatches of time where it was just him and the dog and an unfinished essay, Fenris saw all the reasons he could not stay away from Hawke. His light eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, his hands danced while he talked. He murmured affectionate nonsense to Henry and waxed poetic about the enormity of the solar system and watched old movies while silently mouthing along with the script. Sometimes he sighed and leaned his elbows on the table to look at Fenris without speaking. He just gazed and Fenris gazed back, and it was strange, but sort of nice. Wordless and familiar.

He also burned eggs.

“Fuck!” Hawke hollered. Fenris hobbled to the kitchen, circulation still returning to his half-numb feet, and frowned. Hawke was flapping a dishrag over a smoking pan of blackened scrambled eggs. “I've cremated my eggs!”

“Impressive.” Fenris opened the rickety door that led out onto Hawke's very small second-story balcony, airing out some of the smoke. A rush of freezing air nearly knocked him back; winter in Kirkwall was a motherfucker. Henry immediately bolted for the balcony and began barking at the silent cars parked along the street. He was a very committed guard dog.

Looking even more heartbroken than before, Hawke dumped his eggs into the sink (whispering “goodnight, sweet prince” and looking affronted when Fenris laughed at him) then grabbed Henry by the collar and hauled the beast back inside.

Fenris would have offered to cook something for him but they were both equally hopeless, and so Hawke contented himself with a bag of pretzels which they shared as they sat at his kitchen table and listened to Henry huff and grumble. “Hey, Fenris,” Hawke said, watching him with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “Want to see a trick?”

“Is this the one where you pet the carpet? I've seen that one.”

“Uh. Well. Kind of?” Bravely, Hawke soldiered on. “This is like that one, but... different _._ ”

“How many variations could there possibly be?” Fenris asked through a mouthful of half-chewed pretzel.

“Trust me.” Hawke presented his bare hands to Fenris with a flourish, as though he were an actual stage magician performing for a rapt audience. “Observe and be amazed,” he said, then clapped his palms together and began rubbing them vigorously.

“That's not how it works. You can't generate a charge just by --”

Hawke pulled his hands apart and tiny, delicate threads of electricity traveled between his parallel palms, little twitching tendrils of the palest blue. It looked as though he were playing cat's cradle with a piece of string -- until the threads winked out into nothingness.

Fenris stopped chewing. “How did you do that?”

“Pretty fucking cool, right?” Hawke said. He was grinning and looking down at his hands which now lay palms-up on the table, broad and unremarkable and slightly calloused. “I guess, uh, the air in my apartment is super-dry or something. I think that's what causes it. To be honest, I have no real idea, since all I did was read the Wikipedia page about static electricity but I was _pretty_ drunk at the time.”

Hawke ate a pretzel and Fenris watched him, still quiet.

“You're so awed you can't even speak,” Hawke said, wiping crumbs out of his beard. “I feel like I've won a prize.”

“I've never seen anyone do that before. It was... unexpected.”

“Want to see it again?”

Fenris did.

The veins of electricity between his hands, suspended in midair, looked like the filament in a light bulb right before it burnt out. They didn’t seem to hurt Hawke at all, but he was only able to maintain them for a few seconds before they fizzled. Before long, his palms were pink and slightly raw from rubbing them together, and Fenris’s head was cocked, curious, observing as Hawke's fingertips danced with minuscule sparks.

“Touch me,” Fenris instructed, and Hawke startled, mouth dropping open.

“What?”

“I want to know what it feels like if you shock me.”

“Oh.” Hawke's dark brows drew together. “That seems like a poor choice.”

The answer was, surprisingly, that it fucking hurt. Not like the discharge of a mild static shock, but like jamming several fingers into a live socket. Fenris' arm spasmed up to his shoulder and he made a softly strangled noise; Hawke looked stricken and he pulled away so quickly his chair rocked backward.

After that, Hawke curled his hands into fists and put them in his pockets, and Fenris didn't ask to see the trick again. They did what they were best at: they didn't talk about it.

By some stroke of luck and admirable perseverance, Hawke finished his paper and killed the entire bag of pretzels. The sun was nearly up when he roused Fenris by dragging his heavy body on to the cramped couch where Fenris had long ago passed out. Henry was displaced by Hawke's hairy legs, and he retreated to the bedroom where he would presumably shed fur all over the pillows in petty revenge.

“I did it,” Hawke mumbled into Fenris' neck. “I finished the essay. Twenty-four hundred words. I submitted it. It's out there in the universe, fending for itself now.”

“Congratulations.” Fenris struggled toward wakefulness but it was so warm in the apartment, and Hawke's beard was pleasantly scratchy, and his limbs were paralyzed.

Hawke nudged Fenris' wrist. “I'm going to sleep now.”

“Okay.” Fenris lifted his hand and Hawke curled an arm over his ribs.

Neither of them moved.

They had done this before, three years ago. Plenty of times they had fallen asleep crushed together on the shitty old sofa, Hawke's chin pressed against the top of Fenris' head, their arms tangled and legs entwined. They'd even occasionally slept in Hawke's bed, which was only slightly more comfortable. Fenris had memories of waking up trapped between Hawke and the dog, the two of them snoring and curled tightly against him as though they were trying to anchor him in place. He'd even let Hawke make him come.

And then Fenris had fucked it up, because that's what he did: he shattered the whole idyllic scene, he'd carved out a yawning gulf between them and he'd pretended as though waking up pressed between Hawke and his stupid dog wasn’t the only thing he'd ever wanted in his entire shitty life. As though it didn't stick in his throat like shards of glass the way Hawke no longer touched him, no longer ghosted kisses along the shell of his ear. ( _Because you told him not to, you idiot._ ) Fenris had broken it, and of course Hawke, _fucking_ Hawke, had painstakingly picked up the fragments one by one. For three years. As long as it took until Fenris trusted him.

The bitter joke was, of course, that Fenris had _always_ trusted him.

So that's where they were now: tentative and new. On this couch, again, with Hawke's face in the spot where Fenris' neck joined his shoulder, again, and both of them breathing low and measured breaths as they fell asleep and didn't think about three years of being broken.

It was only a handful of hours later when Hawke jerked awake. “ _Jesus,_ ” he gasped. “Fuck.”

Immediately, Fenris was alert, sitting up, bent over Hawke. “You all right?”

He blinked up at Fenris for a few seconds, owlish and confused and a little sweaty. “I'm... I don't really know.” His voice was hoarse, and he laughed in an ugly way. “Shitty dream. I feel like I'm going to puke.”

Disentangling himself from the blankets and nimbly leaping off the couch without hesitation, Fenris kicked the half-full wastebasket over to Hawke (just in case he really did puke) before fetching a glass of water from the kitchen. The oven clock said 10:37. Outside, the sunlight was weak and grey.

“My hero,” Hawke croaked and drained half the glass in one long gulp.

“What was it about?”

Hawke made a show of checking his phone, scrolling through some texts, thumbing through an email or two. He got all the way to Facebook by the time Fenris lost patience and hurled the phone back into the vortex of blankets and sofa cushions. “My family,” he finally said, hesitant. Then he looked up. “You.”

“Me.” Not really a question, but curious nonetheless.

Hawke cleared his throat. “Yeah. It was, uh, back when we first met, I guess. When you hated me.”

“I never hated you. I just had _opinions_ about you.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Hawke laughed, his breath fogging the glass as he drank. “You and I both know what that actually means.”

Fenris crawled back onto the couch, taking the empty glass from Hawke and placing it gingerly on the floor. He arranged himself between Hawke's legs so that they circled him like a protective ward. They didn't touch each other.

Sighing, Hawke dropped his head forward. “It was back when we first met,” he started again, “and I won you over right away with my charm and finely-chiseled jaw. In the dream, you never hated me. I never messed it up, and you never had to leave.” He was mumbling. “And my family – they were there and they were safe. I mean, not _there,_ I never saw them, but I knew it. I knew Bethany was okay. My mother was still alive.”

Hawke pressed his knuckles to his eyes and shook his head.

“That doesn't sound like a bad dream,” Fenris said softly.

For a terrifying second, Hawke's shoulders quaked as if he would cry, then he straightened up and punched the cushions, settling into them without looking at Fenris. “No, it doesn't, I guess,” he said hoarsely. “I just felt this awful _pull_ the whole time – like part of me knew I was dreaming, but if I stayed asleep forever, then nothing would have to change. Bethany would be here, and I could just call my mom whenever I wanted to, and you – no one could hurt you, and you could be happy. You know? Like I just wanted to... never wake up.”

Fenris buried his hands in the blankets on either side of Hawke's thighs and clutched the fabric very tightly, but his expression didn't change. Hawke didn't see any of it; he was distracting himself by drawing nervous whorls in his own belly hair and chewing at his bottom lip.

“You spoke to me and you were so... _content._ You were so sure of yourself. You told me you wanted... this whole mess.” Hawke gestured to himself, half-naked and sticky with drying sweat. “The way you carried yourself, the way you spoke – it was so tempting, Fenris. But it wasn't _you_.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “I'd take the real thing over any kind of imitation, even if the real thing doesn't appreciate it when I sing Michael Jackson at karaoke nights.”

“I merely have opinions about it.”

Hawke snorted, then closed the circle of his legs around Fenris so that they were sitting nearly nose to nose. He pulled a quilt around both of their shoulders. “I tried to wake up, I tried to leave you – the _dream_ you – and it was like pulling back a curtain. Everything changed. You were spitting curses at me and trying to make me stay.”

“I'm sorry,” Fenris said, because he didn't know what else to say. They were close under the quilt and he could smell Hawke's skin, feel the heat of him.

“I saw what it would have been like to have you,” Hawke said, but he sounded distracted and far away, as though he wasn’t really talking to Fenris anymore. His eyes were fixed on a point over Fenris’ shoulder. He blinked rapidly. “And when I tried to break the illusion, I saw what it would have been like to lose you. Like – like I lost Beth.”

When Hawke swallowed, his adam's apple dipped and rose. There was dark stubble on his neck below his beard. Fenris placed his hand there, feeling the roughness of it and the very gentle beat of his pulse, tapping quick against his veins.

“It was a dream, Hawke.”

“It felt pretty fucking real.”

“You aren’t going to lose me.”

It was an idle reassurance but it felt much heavier than that when Fenris said it aloud. Hawke flicked his eyes to Fenris. They looked at each other for a long, strange moment, but Hawke's gaze was so full of quiet hurt and smothered _want_ that Fenris couldn't breathe. He cast off the quilt and stood up.

“I'm starving,” Fenris announced.

Twenty minutes later they were sitting side by side at a sticky Formica countertop downtown, ordering hash browns and lukewarm coffee. Fenris was wearing one of Hawke’s sweatshirts and it spilled down his arms and over his hips like a dress, and it smelled a little bit like dog. Hawke was still in his pajamas, more or less, with a toque pulled low over his ears. His high tops were still half-untied and the laces had dragged in the dirty slush outside. They were both a mess.

Hawke bumped Fenris’ elbow with his own deliberately while they ate, earning him several withering looks that seemed to absolutely delight him; he cackled so loudly that one of the waitresses turned to stare and Fenris pretended he had never met Hawke in his life.

When they stumbled back outside into the cold, Hawke wordlessly pulled Fenris into a crushing hug. Fenris stood there for a moment, his ear pressed to Hawke’s chest, and watched cars crawl along the icy street; then he looped his own arms around Hawke’s big, stupid shoulders and they stood like that for a long time.

 _Don’t leave me, either_ , Fenris thought. _Please._

 

\---

 

It was raining very softly, barely more than a frigid mist, and the streetlights glowed like hazy halos overhead. Fenris ashed his cigarette on the pavement and exhaled a spilling plume of smoke; Hawke waved it away as they walked shoulder to shoulder, bumping against one another. Hawke's gait was unsteady and drunk, he stumbled occasionally and caught himself, and Fenris laughed a little over-loud. Drinking with Isabela always turned into one drink too many, then two, then four, and then you lost count. Tonight was no different. She'd stayed behind at her own apartment and turned the rest of them out, loose-limbed and giddy, to the dark streets of Lowtown.

Hawke was telling a story, entirely consumed with it, while Varric was several paces behind, goading him on. Something about a video game they both played.

“So I'm in this cave, right? And it's fucking – fucking _pitch black_ ,” Hawke said, turning around to walk backwards and gesticulate as he spoke, and Fenris could just _hear_ Varric grinning. “It's just me and my sword. I left my companion back at the start, because she's always stepping on traps...”

“Ah, the lone wolf approach,” Varric said.

Hawke pointed at Varric. “Yes! Lone wolf. I love wolves.”

He really did love wolves, and would expound on the subject at length if given the opportunity. “You were in the cave,” Fenris prompted him.

“The _cave_ ,” Hawke said, back on track. “I'm alone in the cave, looking for mushrooms to make this fucking fire resist potion so I can go back and kill that shitty dragon.” His foul mouth tended to get fouler when he was drunk. “And then it's like, _pow_! Bear! Big fucking bear, five levels above me!”

Merrill gasped.

“But right behind the bear,” Hawke said, his voice climbing in volume, “are the mushrooms!”

“Unbelievable,” Varric said.

“Turn around, Hawke,” Fenris told him. “You're going to fall on your ass if you keep walking backwards.”

Hawke winked at Fenris, for some reason, but did as he was told.

“Did you kill the bear?” Merrill sounded a little dismayed at the notion.

“I'm a master of stealth, Merrill,” Hawke said, dropping into an awkward crouch to drive the point home. “So I had my sword like _this_ and I was creeping up to it and then at the last second, it turns around and spots me, and I'm like, _I don't fucking think so, bear_. Then I stab – ah, shit.”

Fenris stopped walking, flicking away his cigarette and offering Hawke a hand where he'd tripped and rolled over on his back on the wet pavement. Hawke sighed and accepted it, grasping their palms together, and for a second Fenris felt – _something._ His skin tingled with a sensation just shy of painful and when he yanked his hand away, he saw those jagged blue threads trailing behind, leaving empty air. As Hawke struggled to right himself and find his balance, he reached out to lean against one of the street lights lining the sidewalk.

With a sharp buzzing noise, the light flickered and winked out.

Fenris and Hawke both cast their gaze upward.

“Uh,” Hawke said.

“It’s astounding how you manage to break everything you touch, Hawke,” Varric said. He had paused several paces away, holding his cellphone up like a flashlight while Merrill dug around in her purse for something. “You know, like Midas, but stupid.”

“You think that was…?” Hawke asked Fenris, trailing off as he held one of his hands out in front of him and inspected it with childlike curiosity as though it were about to hop from his wrist and begin performing tricks.

The street wasn't empty. There were lit storefronts and people laughing and headlights slicing through the mist. Without really knowing why, Fenris felt like a brick was settling in his stomach. Whatever _it_ was, whatever Hawke had done, maybe it was safer if no one knew about it. “Come on,” he said brusquely. “Keep walking.”

“That was weird,” Hawke mumbled, lingering a moment longer to stare at the darkened street light before he skipped to catch up to Fenris, slinging a companionable arm over his shoulders. “You saw that too, right?”

Fenris tolerated the weight of his arm, his gait changing. “I saw it.”

“Holy shit, Fen. What if I have a _superpower_?” Hawke asked in a loud whisper, his eyes suddenly going as wide as dinner plates. The question, Fenris knew, was completely serious, and he couldn’t help but laugh at it.

“Of course you of all people would have the shittiest superpower imaginable,” Fenris said, shaking his head. “Popping lightbulbs and blowing fuses.”

In retaliation, Hawke curled his arm tighter around Fenris, pulling him in irritatingly close; Fenris tried to duck out from under him, but Hawke gave sudden chase, and then the two of them were off and running down the street, Merrill laughing after them as they splashed through puddles.

Hawke had longer legs but he also had a shittier alcohol tolerance, so he slowed to a groaning stop half a block later, looking slightly queasy. “Mercy,” he pleaded, breathless.

Fenris rounded on Hawke, cornering him against the crumbling brick facade of an old Lowtown chapel. The bell hung silent in its steeple and the windows were dark -- the church had probably closed its doors long ago. Not much faith to be found in this part of Kirkwall. “Look,” Fenris said. “Just make me a promise. That trick you do? Don’t do it in public.”

Catching his breath, Hawke shrugged. “I didn’t exactly do it on purpose that time. It just kind of… happened. Besides, Varric didn’t even notice.”

“Maybe not,” Fenris told him. The words came out in silvery puffs that froze in midair. His innards were quivering, and he felt foolish for being spooked by nothing. “But someone will eventually, don’t you think?”

“All right, I promise,” Hawke said, still unconvinced, but happy nonetheless to pledge whatever Fenris asked of him. He shot Fenris a winning and slightly drunk smile. “I’ll keep it in my pants.”

“What’s this about Hawke’s pants?” Varric asked, coming up behind them.

In the damp moonlight, Hawke’s smile shone. As though nothing he had happened, he babbled to Varric about inconsequential things, and Fenris fell into step again at his back. Always happy to follow. Until of course Hawke slowed his strides to a crawl so that Fenris was forced to walk beside him.

Fenris was quiet all the way back to Hawke's apartment. More often than not, this was where the lot of them tended to land when they had nowhere better to go. Isabela was down for the count, Aveline was pointedly ignoring everyone's drunken texts, and Anders was – well, nobody ever knew where Anders was, nor did Fenris much care. And so Merrill sprawled on Hawke's messy floor chattering to Henry, Varric made a beeline for the kitchen (presumably to unearth more alcohol) and Fenris led Hawke to the balcony, closing the door behind them.

Neither of them spoke for a minute or two. Fenris pulled the battered pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and toyed with it, propping one unlit between his teeth.

“Is this... boxed wine, Hawke?” Varric called from the kitchen. “Why do you do this to me?”

“Fenris likes it,” Hawke called back.

Hawke didn't really drink wine. Fenris did. Hawke had started keeping a box of Franzia in his fridge for him. _Just in case,_ he had said, grinning crookedly, then hefted the case of wine on to one broad shoulder with a guffaw. _Get it?_

Fenris had always liked wine -- when he was young, he’d liked the way it made him feel classy and sophisticated when he was very far from either of those things, and later he’d come to appreciate it for its baser purposes: it got him fucked up. It quieted his brain, it loosened his muscles, it made him not care. He drank wine so often that most people assumed he was some kind of connoisseur but the truth was he didn’t give a shit about oak notes or the origins of the grapes. Hawke thought it was funny, but Hawke seemed to think most things about Fenris were funny.

For his part, Hawke preferred whiskey. Fenris wouldn’t touch the stuff.

As if to prove a point, the balcony door rattled and Varric’s face appeared alongside a very dusty bottle of Crown Royal. “You’ve been holding out on us, Hawke.”

“Oh, Christ,” groaned Hawke. “My brother gave that to me for my birthday, like, three years ago. It probably tastes like wet sawdust at this point.”

“Not a problem,” Varric said breezily, his voice fading as he retreated back into the kitchen, leaving the door ajar. “I have no qualms about disrespecting my tastebuds if it gets me drunk.”

Standing side by side and staring out at the foggy lights of Lowtown, Hawke reached for Fenris’ hand. He made it halfway, laying his palm on the bannister, waiting for Fenris to close the connection.

Henry seized the opportunity that Varric had graciously left for him and forced his girth through the open balcony door. He pushed himself between Fenris and Hawke and sat back on his haunches like a loyal guard, barking at unmoving cars so loudly that the sound rolled over the streets with an echo like thunder.

Fenris tangled his fingers with Hawke’s, feeling that familiar spark.


	2. Chapter 2

Fenris stared at his water-stained ceiling in momentary confusion, marveling at how it felt nearly foreign to wake up in his own bed now. He’d spent so many nights the last few weeks babysitting Hawke, calming him after his violent dreams shook him awake. Maybe babysitting was an unfair word, but that was what Hawke had called it before he kicked Fenris out last night.

“Go home,” Hawke had said tiredly. “You don’t need to fuss over me like this.”

 _What will happen if I don’t?_ Fenris didn’t ask him.

Though it appeared the answer to that was “nothing,” because when Fenris rolled over to look at his phone, he had two notifications, neither of which were Hawke-related: an email from one of his professors (which he deleted without reading) and a mass text from Isabela about a Pre-Christmas party she was throwing.

“That’s not even a thing,” Fenris muttered. “Pre-Christmas.”

He had class later but he knew before he even swung his legs out of bed that he wasn’t going. In the back of his head, Aveline’s voice tutted at him. With a jaw-cracking yawn he shuffled bare feet over the scratchy beige carpet that lined his studio apartment, yanking on his jeans and eyeing his empty fridge.

On cue, his phone chimed. Another one from Isabela, solely for him this time.

 **Isabela (11:12 AM):** _come to the greek place!!! BRUNCH!_

 **Fenris (11:14 AM):** _I just woke up two seconds ago._

 **Isabela (11:15 AM):** _i don’t care. you don’t even have to be conscious. i’ll hand feed you spanikopita_

Fenris responded with several instances of the poop emoji (it was Isabela’s favorite) and made no promises, but he pulled on a hoodie and his denim jacket anyway. That was the best he could do for a winter coat, because every year Fenris rationalized not buying a real one with the logic that he never actually went outside very often -- then bitterly regretted it when he did _._ So he wrapped a heavy scarf around his neck, pulled a hat on over his wild hair, and spat frothy green mouthwash in the sink before jogging out the door.

“I knew you couldn’t resist spanikopita,” Isabela cooed to Fenris as he was blown through the door on a crest of winter air. She wiggled her fingers at him suggestively.

Shaking the cold out, Fenris crammed into the creaking vinyl booth next to her, saying, “I’ll stick to silverware.”

Merrill was there, and she blasted him with the full force of her happiest smile; she was a morning person. Less of a morning person but no less present was, surprisingly, Anders.

“You look like hell,” Anders said, a greeting that Fenris actually found more tolerable than getting an eyeful of every single one of Merrill’s teeth.

“It’s a carefully cultivated aesthetic.” Fenris flagged down one of the waitresses and asked for coffee, as well as bread with tahini and honey; when she nodded, he thanked her in Greek, then turned to Anders. “I haven’t seen you around for a while.”

The table space around Anders’ ceramic coffee mug was littered with empty creamer packets and grains of sugar. The man always doctored his coffee to taste like dessert. It was gross. Most things about Anders were gross, but Fenris hadn’t brushed his teeth in probably close to 24 hours now, so he kept that judgment to himself.

“I just got in last night from Helsinki,” Anders said, rubbing at his eyes. “Working off the jet lag.”

“What was in Helsinki?” Merrill asked, munching on her omelet.

“A lot of fucking snow,” Anders told her, “and supposedly a story about Scandinavian lawmakers colluding with oil companies to build a massive pipeline through Finland’s unsullied wilderness, but no one would talk to me. Not even off the record.”

“Finns,” Isabela said with scorn. “Bunch of tight-lipped bastards.”

Merrill’s mouth formed a small _o_. “Have you ever met anyone from Finland?”

“Never in my life,” Isabela admitted, stealing a slice of roasted tomato from the edge of Merrill’s plate.

Sighing bitterly, Anders lamented, “Guess I’m not getting paid for this story.”

He was a freelance journalist of some kind. Fenris wasn’t clear on the specifics mostly because Anders himself had never clarified the matter very much, and it had never interested him enough to ask for further details.

Merrill patted Anders’ shoulder comfortingly. “Why not try to find steady work instead of freelance? I would think that’d be far less stressful, don’t you?” she said.

“I _had_ steady work.”

“He got fired for asking too many questions,” Isabela chortled.

Anders made a pained face. “They were legitimate questions.”

“Well, of course they were,” Isabela said. “They wouldn’t have fired you otherwise.”

Unable to resist the compulsion, Fenris dug his phone out of his pocket underneath the table and checked it. Still no “ _help me I’m dying_ ” texts from Hawke. This was a record. He felt both relieved and disappointed -- some part of him had liked it a little bit, being needed. By someone like Hawke, no less.

As experienced at surreptitious phone-checking as anyone had ever been, Isabela spotted him right away and scolded, “No phones at the dinner table.”

“It’s brunch,” Merrill corrected her.

Probably because he wanted to embarrass Fenris, probably because he was actually partway curious, Anders then asked, “where _is_ Hawke? He loves this shitty diner. Why isn’t he here?”

“I texted him but he didn’t respond.” Isabela drained the last of her coffee, looking sadly at the gritty dregs in the bottom of her cup.

“He’s probably sleeping,” Fenris said. The waitress returned with both his coffee and his sweetened tahini and he surprised himself with how hungry he actually was.

Anders frowned. “At noon on a Tuesday? Even for him, that seems extraordinarily lazy.”

“He hasn’t been sleeping well,” Merrill said. She gave Fenris a sympathetic look, and he hiked up his eyebrows at her, a little salty. _Why look at me? I’m not his keeper._ “He told me he’s been having nightmares.”

Isabela laughed before she could stop herself, then tamped it down when she saw Merrill’s very serious expression. “Hawke’s a big boy. I didn’t think he’d be bothered by bad dreams.”

“He’s only asked me about it,” Merrill said. “He said he dreamed about lots of things and he was wondering what they all meant. I gave him a few sachets of tea to help him sleep and suggested he write it all down in a dream journal.”

That explained the stinking chamomile tea that Hawke had been throwing back every night.

“A dream journal?” Fenris asked.

She leaned forward, nodding eagerly. It wasn’t often that Fenris was interested in her hippie shit, and she looked as though she relished the opportunity to elaborate. “Well, dreams are like a patchwork quilt, made up of pieces of our souls,” she said sagely.

Jesus Christ. Fenris immediately regretted asking.

“And each of these pieces has significance that might not be obvious right away. Like, if you dream about your teeth falling out, it could mean you’re scared about something, or you’re worrying too much.”

Had Hawke ever mentioned dreaming about something like that? Fenris didn’t think so, but he had also mostly stopped talking about the content of his nightmares.

“So if you write them all down,” she continued, “it helps you look at the whole patchwork. All the details are important. Maybe Hawke is having nightmares because he has things that are bothering him in real life that he needs to sort out.” Again, a pointed look at Fenris, and this time he wasn’t sure his eyebrows could crawl any higher up his forehead before they just walked right off his face.

“I once interviewed a guy in Borneo who told me he made deals with demons in his dreams,” Anders said, sipping his coffee. “I almost believed him.”

“Boring,” Isabela said. “Last night I dreamt I was sitting on my professor’s face while reciting the Bill of Rights and waving an Orlesian flag. Interview _me._ ”

Fenris donated the last of his breakfast to Isabela and left a few minutes later. When he stepped outside, the sun was shining warm on the top of his head, and before he really made a conscious decision, his feet were taking him toward the waterfront. Halfway there, he stopped in front of a bookstore, one that had been here since he first landed in Lowtown, its name -- _The Athenaeum --_ painted in flaking goldleaf inside the front window. He’d never been inside.

The bell above the door chirped as he pushed it open, and the sound summoned a willowy girl with long hair and crooked glasses.

“Do you have, uh…” He shifted from foot to foot, cleared his throat, tried again. “I’m looking for a journal.”

Any kind of journal would do, Fenris thought -- it was just paper and binding. What difference did it make? It all served the same purpose. But when the girl with the crooked glasses led him to a tall stack of shelves and left him to his own devices, he found that he didn’t want to simply grab the first one he saw. He wanted to take his time, and so he did.

This one was too gaudy. That one too flimsy -- when Hawke wrote, he pressed his pen to the paper like he was trying to impale it, often leaving fragmented imprints of his wide handwriting on the surfaces of tables. This one _smelled_ weird, which Fenris didn’t really understand, and the rest all fell short in some way or another, until he spotted a small, leatherbound book fastened shut by a ribbon of red silk. The dark leather was pebbled, soft under his fingers, and the paper was thick and resilient. The lines on each sheet were set wide, with generous margins. When he looked closer at the ribbon, he saw it was edged with gold thread.

The price made him wince but, regardless, he walked out of the bookstore with a paper bag cradled under his arm.

 **Fenris (1:09 PM):** _Are you alive?_

 **Hawke (1:11 PM):** _Unfortunately, yes._ _What are you doing right now?_

 **Fenris (1:11 PM):** _Sitting on the pier, yelling at seagulls._

 **Hawke (1:12 PM):** _One of life’s greatest joys. I can also personally recommend yelling at geese._ _Do not ever fuck with swans though, unless you want to die_

 **Fenris (1:12 PM):** _Noted. Where are you?_

 **Hawke (1:13 PM):** _I’m at the dog park trying to find Henry a girlfriend but he’s got no game_

 **Fenris (1:14 PM):** _Need my help?_

 **Hawke (1:14 PM):** _Always_

 

_\---_

 

When they walked back to Hawke’s apartment, Fenris asked to hold Henry’s leash; he liked feeling the way the dog tugged, liked the way Henry responded to his movements and trotted alongside him, casting dumb, loving glances up at Fenris every once in awhile. They made the journey mostly in silence, Hawke occasionally making jokes or murmuring praise to Henry, and Fenris felt the weight of the journal in his jacket pocket with every step.

Outside Hawke’s apartment, Fenris slowed to a stop, and Hawke did, too.

“I have something for you,” Fenris said, looping the leash around his wrist. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the folded paper bag, now slightly worse for wear, and presented it to Hawke uncertainly.

Hawke cocked his head for a moment and accepted the paper package. “This is for me?”

“Yes,” Fenris said. He studied the dirty chunks of melting ice at the edge of the sidewalk. “If you want it.”

“Of course I want it,” Hawke told him. “I don’t even know what it is, but it’s from you, so… of course I want it.” He dug inside the bag and held aloft the little leather journal, brushing his hand over the cover, rubbing the ribbon between his fingertips, and flipping through its pages. His eyes were slightly wide, particularly when he reached the back cover and spotted the price tag. “Jesus, Fenris.”

“Merrill mentioned something about a dream journal -- I think that’s what she called it. I wasn’t sure if that was something you were interested in, but…”

Hawke looked overwhelmed, his eyes ricocheting between Fenris and the journal and back again. “You bought me a gift,” he marveled. “You were _thinking_ of me.”

Patting Henry’s coarse fur, Fenris scoffed. “I do that often.”

Hawke pinned him with a stare. “I do, too. About you, I mean.”

Fenris tugged his scarf up over his mouth, swallowing both a smile and a sigh that climbed up from some deeper recess inside him. Being around Hawke was exhausting sometimes; there were parts of Fenris that reached for him desperately and parts that recoiled in terror. There was no middle ground and there never had been. And every minute he still felt the guilt over leaving Hawke like needles under his skin.

“Thank you,” Hawke said, and he sounded so obscenely sincere and gracious. “I mean, I’ve just been writing that dream shit on napkins, but this is way better. I can’t believe you bought me a _gift._ ”

“Hawke,” Fenris said, rolling his eyes.

“I mean it! This is a big deal! Let me have this moment.”

“Friends buy each other gifts all the time,” Fenris said very carefully, tangling and untangling his fingers in the red rope of the leash.

“Is that what we are?” Hawke asked. His voice was light but the question wasn’t, and Fenris couldn’t look at his face. Any answer he could give was terrifying.

After a long, silent moment stretched out into awkwardness, Fenris felt Hawke’s hand around his wrist, looping loosely like Henry’s leash. His skin was warm and dry, his grip reassuringly gentle. Fenris remembered the way it felt to brush a kiss over the roughness of Hawke’s knuckles; he remembered how it felt when Hawke’s thumbs slotted neatly between his hipbones. His throat burned with unspoken words, but when he looked at Hawke, the words fell away.

 _Don’t do this to him,_ Fenris told himself as he did it anyway.

He pushed Hawke none too gently through the heavy front door of the apartment building, out of view of the street and into the hallway. Hawke let himself be pushed, let Fenris corner him. It hurt when they collided for a kiss but it was supposed to; Hawke was too desperate for gentleness and Fenris had never been fond of it anyway.

The corridor ceilings were high and arched and the sound of their syncopated breaths echoed back to them. Hawke pulled the leash from Fenris’ hand and tossed it to the floor as Fenris backed him up to the stairs that lead to the second-floor apartment. Henry, once released, trotted up obediently and waited for them at the door while they lingered on the front step.

“I wasn’t lying,” Hawke murmured into Fenris’ mouth, hands pulling at Fenris’ jacket, biting his lip, breathing him in. “I think about you all the time.”

Fenris pulled away and pressed a hand over Hawke’s mouth, silencing him. He then led him up the stairs. It was slow and clumsy going -- Hawke stopped and strong-armed Fenris against the railing, sneaking fingers beneath the hem of his shirt; Fenris nearly tripped trying to walk backwards and catch Hawke’s tongue in his mouth at the same time. When they landed at Hawke’s door, the keys were already in his hand and he fumbled the lock open like he was breaking the code on a bank vault, fingers trembling.

Henry preceded them inside, sprinting for his food bowl with his attached leash still trailing behind him; Hawke kicked the door closed and Fenris grabbed him, crushing Hawke’s back to the wall and kissing him again.

Kissing Hawke felt like something was reaching inside Fenris’ chest and slowly squeezing his lungs. He struggled to take a full breath but Hawke was relentless and so Fenris let himself suffocate. They were clinging to each other, hands tangled in hair and bodies pressed painfully flush. Hawke trailed his thumb over the white lines on Fenris’ chin, a familiar touch, a gesture he’d performed over and over, and his skin itched with the memory. He lifted his chin and Hawke broke the kiss to run his mouth over the long column of his neck.

Fenris nudged a knee between Hawke’s legs and leaned into him. He knew Hawke would be hard but it still shocked him to feel it pressing against his thigh, a reminder that even if Hawke was bigger and broader and stronger, Fenris still knew how to control him. The thought of being able to bring Hawke to his knees was thrilling and complicated, tangled with a dozen emotions.

The back of Hawke’s head hit the wall with a _thump_ and his throat worked as he swallowed loudly. “Oh, god,” he breathed, moving his hips in the smallest motion against the pressure of Fenris’ leg, and his eyes screwed shut.

Fenris rocked forward, teasing out another groan. Hawke grabbed rough and greedy at Fenris’ jeans, yanking him closer.

 _Don’t do this to him,_ Fenris’ brain repeated. _You know how this story ends._

When Hawke opened his eyes again, tipping his head forward to look at Fenris through his lashes, his lip caught between his teeth and gaze brimming over with _I adore you_ and _I want to fuck you into next week_ , Fenris wanted to rewrite the ending to this story into something better than it was last time.

But it was a baseless, stupid hope: he’d already been given a chance for a happy ending with Hawke and he’d fucked it up.

He hesitated only a hair’s breadth of a second too long and immediately Hawke’s face darkened with worry. “Are you --” he started, and Fenris growled, “stop talking” and punctuated it with another brutal kiss.

Even if Fenris had been able to stop himself, he wouldn’t have; he wanted to touch Hawke so fucking _badly_ that it ached inside him. He reached down between them to tug at Hawke’s belt, slipping open the buckle and hooking his finger in the button. It popped loose. Hawke was wearing striped blue underwear. Boxer-briefs. His ass always looked best in boxer-briefs.

 _I think I gave him those_ , Fenris thought distantly as he ground his hips against Hawke.

“Hold on,” Hawke whispered. “Wait, Fen. You don’t have to do this.”

Fenris snaked insistent fingers beneath the waistband of Hawke’s underwear. He stood on his toes to kiss him again but Hawke yanked away.

“Wait,” he said again. His voice was louder, pleading. “I don’t -- if this is too fast, I don’t want you to freak out --”

Fenris closed his fingers around Hawke’s erection and the feeling of him, thick and warm, made Fenris’ hair stand on end, as though his skin really did run with an electric current. Hawke pushed back against him and made an incoherent noise in his throat, but it wasn’t appreciative.

“Fenris, _stop,_ ” he begged, sounding angry and rough. Miserable. He grabbed for Fenris’ exploring hand.

There was a smell like sulphur and a noise like cracking glass, and Hawke’s fingertips sparked. Fenris gasped, felt what little breath he had condense inside his lungs, and then suddenly he was laid flat on his back at Hawke’s feet with his arm cradled to his chest and his whole body taut in pain.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Hawke cried, dropping to his knees next to Fenris. “Fuck! Fucking Christ, are you okay? Oh my god --”

Henry was barking crazily but the noise took a second to register in Fenris’ ears. Slowly he uncurled his body and looked down at his hand. Where Hawke had touched him, the skin was raw and charred and bleeding, blackened around the edges. He couldn’t quite make sense of what he was seeing, but he knew the pain was real.

“What…” Fenris mumbled, the words slurring in his mouth a little, “what the fuck did you do?”

“I’m so sorry,” Hawke was repeating over and over like a terrified mantra. He was pale and wild-eyed, as panicked as Fenris had ever seen him, and he hovered nervous fingers over Fenris but did not touch. “Are you dying? What should I -- should we go to the hospital? Goddammit, Henry, shut _up!_ ”

Chastened, Henry stopped barking long enough to realize that Fenris was prostrate on the floor and in prime position for unwelcome face kisses. Hawke jumped to his feet to run interference, grabbing the dog’s collar and corralling him in the bedroom, slamming the door hard enough that the walls rattled. Henry whined pitifully and scraped his claws against the doorjamb.

Fenris let his head drop back on the hardwood floor, gritting his teeth. He had a high tolerance for pain, but his eyes were watering anyway. When he blinked, a tear rolled over his temple.

Hawke’s gaze followed the droplet as it puddled in the hollow of Fenris’ ear, and he was making a face as though he’d been slapped. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I don’t… I don’t know what happened.”

“I don’t either,” Fenris groaned. He sucked in a bracing breath and pushed himself upright; Hawke extended a hand to help him but withdrew when Fenris gave him a warning look.

“Right. Uh. Hands to myself.” Hawke half-sprinted to the bathroom where he ran the tap where he called Fenris in. He was still pale and sweating, but now his movements were decisive and he spoke with authority, as if he were on autopilot.

Mother hen mode. Fenris recognized it. The last time he’d seen Hawke like this was when Varric had tried to jump a fence, failed spectacularly, and landed on his shoulder hard enough to dislocate it. Merrill was so panicked that she immediately took out her cellphone and tried to call her mother and Isabela kept backing away while hollering “gross, dude, _gross_ ” -- but Fenris held Varric still as Hawke popped the fucking thing back in place.

Fenris drove them to the hospital afterward, though, and that was when Hawke freaked out and almost puked out the car window while yelling, “did you hear the _sound_ it made when it went back in?”

“Put your hand in here,” Hawke was saying to Fenris, filling up the sink with cold water. “This’ll keep the swelling down, and it should help with the pain.”

Fenris was still dazed, but Hawke’s voice echoing softly against the tiles was familiar. Being ordered around was familiar. He did as he was told without thinking about it. That, too, was familiar.

The cold water was a shock and it stung like a motherfucker. Fenris exhaled sharply and swayed a little on his feet. “It’ll _help_ with the pain, you said?”

“Give it a minute,” Hawke told him sympathetically, then he backed away, allowing Fenris as wide a berth as he possibly could in his tiny bathroom. His knees hit the lip of the tub and he sat down, tucking his hands beneath his thighs tightly and folding up his long legs. His pants were still unbuttoned, slung low around his hips. Vibrant blue fabric peeked out.

“Did I give you those?” Fenris asked.

Hawke blinked. “What?”

“The underwear you’ve got on.”

Hawke glanced down and then as though struck with sudden shyness he pulled the hem of his t-shirt over himself. “You -- um, yes, you did.” He laughed and shook his head, color in his cheeks. “For my birthday a few years ago.”

_Oh._

Shame coiled like a bilious knot in Fenris’ gut. He remembered now. Three years ago; Hawke’s twenty-second birthday. Fenris had teased him for months about his collection of threadbare tighty-whities, and the instant Hawke unwrapped his gift he’d dropped his pants in front of everyone and donned his new underwear, beaming brightly. He’d pulled Fenris into a quiet corner and drunkenly whispered _I love you_ for the first time.

Fenris had left after that and they hadn’t spoken for a year.

“I’m sorry,” Hawke said for the millionth time. “I swear to god, on my mother’s grave, on what little honor I have, I would never hurt you intentionally.”

“You didn’t --” Fenris started, then realized Hawke was talking about here and now. Not three years ago. “I’m not angry at you. I just don’t understand what the hell you _did_.”

“I don’t know!” Hawke scrubbed his cheek against his own shoulder, wiping sweat off his face. “I don’t know. It felt like I… like I lost control for a second. I mean, I didn’t even know I _could_ do something like that. Everything was kind of happening at once, and I panicked, and then suddenly you were on your ass.”

The knot in Fenris’ stomach tightened. Hawke didn’t want to be touched by him, but Fenris had done it anyway, because he was too stupid to stop himself. He felt disgusting. His wrist throbbed.

“I was afraid,” Hawke said quietly, all semblance of his authoritative self fallen away. “I was afraid that if we… you know…” He trailed off and shrugged like an awkward teenager. “I didn’t want to scare you if we moved too fast, because -- fuck, what if you left again? I can’t do that a second time, Fen. I don’t think I’d survive it.”

Fenris didn’t know what to say; he wasn’t even sure he remembered how to speak. When he lifted his hand from the water, the skin around the burn looked pale and bloodless and transparent blisters had begun forming in the shape of Hawke’s fingers.

Hawke made a sad noise, his eyes on the chewed-up flesh on Fenris’ wrist. He yanked one hand out of its hold to press the heel of his palm against his eyes then inhaled slowly, like he was about to say something important.

“I guess I rubbed Varric’s carpet too hard.”

Despite himself, despite everything, Fenris laughed.

_Fucking Hawke._

“I don’t understand it,” Hawke murmured, his head bowed. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“There could be a reasonable explanation for it,” Fenris said quietly, but he didn’t actually believe that, and he was too tired and in too much pain to make it sound convincing.

Hawke hunched in on himself. His hands were still folded tightly beneath his legs, trapped there as if he didn’t trust himself.

“It’ll be okay,” Fenris said, but neither of them believed that either.

 

\---

 

“I need your help,” Hawke said as soon as he sat down across from Aveline in the farthest, emptiest corner of the deserted coffee shop. His voice was low and Aveline raised her eyebrows.

“Of course you do. Hello, Fenris,” she added warmly. He nodded to her in return, flopping into a chair next to Hawke’s bulk.

Several days had passed since Fenris had last seen or spoken to Hawke. There were smudged shadows under his eyes but the ever-present smile was still plastered on.

“I just need you to hear me out and tell me if I’m crazy,” Hawke said to Aveline.

“I don't even have to hear it to know that you are,” she said. Straight from work, she was dressed in a starched white shirt and black pants, her red hair swept up into a bun and her mouth awkwardly painted with dark lipstick. The lipstick was new, Fenris noted. Maybe she was trying to impress someone at the precinct.

“You might want to listen to this one,” Fenris told her, his eyebrows pulled low over his eyes.

After four days of not speaking to each other, Fenris had run into Hawke earlier that afternoon outside the university bookstore where Hawke worked. It was mostly by chance, Fenris picking up a textbook for an art history class and Hawke shelving books while looking distracted. They’d stared wordlessly, neither of them knowing what to say to each other for a few moments and Hawke, dark-eyed with exhaustion, had kept a respectful distance.

Then they both spoke at once -- _are you sleeping okay?_ and _does your wrist hurt?_ \-- and the squeezing tension lessened by a few degrees. Timid, Hawke asked Fenris to come with him to talk to Aveline.

“About… about _this,_ ” Hawke said helplessly, spreading his hands. They were familiar hands, unmarked, unchanged, palms dry and calloused.

Fenris agreed, even though he didn’t want to. He had to say yes. He was worried; he hadn’t stopped worrying for four days. And Hawke looked like hell.

Now, Hawke leaned across the table and beckoned for Aveline to do the same. She gave him a deeply skeptical stare but followed suit, crossing her arms and huddling close to Hawke. Fenris slid his gaze around the quiet coffee shop, fiddling with Aveline’s discarded coffee lid and bouncing his leg nervously.

Whatever Hawke told her, Fenris didn’t hear it, but it was hard to miss the waves of bafflement and disbelief that radiated from Aveline’s hunched shoulders. After several moments of tense whispering, she slapped a hand on the table and sat back, shaking her head.

“Stop it. You’re trying to pull one over on me again, like when you tried to convince me you had no teeth and you were actually wearing dentures.”

“Okay, first of all, you believed me that time, which was hilarious,” Hawke said, the corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly at the memory. “And second, this is totally different, because I’m telling the truth.” He looked at Fenris for backup.

“I know how it must sound,” Fenris admitted with reluctance, now slowly pulling the plastic coffee cup lid into several pieces. Aveline was trustworthy, and yet he couldn’t shake the vague anxiety that dogged him, the feeling that Hawke’s ‘trick’ needed to stay secret. “But I can promise you, I’ve seen it firsthand.”

Aveline seemed to cross her arms even harder. Her gaze was disapproving. “Fenris, you’re in on this, too?”

“I swear to you, Aveline,” Hawke said, starting to sound slightly desperate. “I’m just -- I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know who I can ask for help.”

Aveline was unmoved. “You said you burnt out a lightbulb on a Lowtown city street? Those lampposts can hardly keep themselves upright as it is. I would know – I've complained about it to my boss before. They're a goddamn safety hazard. A particularly stiff wind could have put out that light. You had nothing to do with it.”

“I fried my laptop. I touched it and it just.. _. fzzt,_ ” Hawke tried, miming a small explosion.

“You've spilled beer on it more times than I can possibly count. It was a genuine miracle the thing still functioned. Again, hardly evidence of...” She made a face, shrugging.

Rolling up his sleeve, Fenris roughly laid his arm in front of her with enough impact to rattle the table.

“He did this,” Fenris growled.

Hawke looked away.

Ever unruffled, Aveline leaned closer and studied the hand-shaped pattern of heat blisters wringing Fenris’ wrist. The charred spots had begun to scab over in dry, wrinkled patches. Her skepticism wavered, replaced by a flicker of shock that lasted only a half-second before she schooled herself into composure once again.

“It could be a rash,” she said, her eyes trained on Fenris. “You never know where Hawke's been.”

Normally, Hawke would have something to say, a quip or retort or feigned offense, but his gaze was tracing the dirty grout in the tiled floor with intensity.

 _This isn't normal,_ Fenris thought.

It was no skin off his nose whether Aveline believed them or not -- it hadn't even been his idea to tell her -- but he knew Hawke was worried, and he also knew he couldn't fix whatever it was that was worrying him. After Leandra had died, Aveline was perhaps the closest thing Hawke had to a responsible adult in his life.

“I can show you,” Hawke said.

“No, Hawke. This is absurd and you know it.” Aveline pushed back her chair and stood up. Her jaw was set -- and yet she planted a motherly kiss on the crown of Hawke’s head as she left, and gave Fenris a gentle smile. That was Aveline: unbending iron will tempered by gentle edges.

“That was a bust, I guess,” Hawke said, still staring at the floor.

“I don’t know what you expected her to say.”

“Truthfully, I don’t either.” He laughed and raked a hand through his already disheveled dark hair. He looked so tired. “I guess I was just hoping for a little reassurance.”

 _I wish I could give you what you needed,_ Fenris thought tiredly. He was burnt out on all his stupid self-pity but he couldn’t stem the flow of it.

Hawke stayed sitting, his elbows on the table and his fingers tangled in his hair, staring out the window as though he had forgotten Fenris entirely. In his pocket, Fenris’ phone vibrated.

 **Aveline (7:24 PM):** _I can’t believe I’m asking this. But._

 **Aveline (7:24 PM):** _Is hawke being truthful?_

Fenris considered all the ways he could answer this question. He settled for simple honesty.

 **Fenris (7:25 PM):** _He is. He’s afraid, and I don’t blame him._

 **Aveline (7:28 PM):** _I don’t even know what to say._

 **Aveline (7:29 PM):** _Look. If he’s really worried, maybe he can talk to anders. If anyone would know about something like this, it’s definitely anders._

 **Aveline (7:30 PM):** _Just don’t let it get too weird, ok?_

 **Fenris (7:44 PM):** _I’ll try._

 **Aveline (7:51 PM):** _And get that burn looked at so it doesn’t get infected._

 

\---

 

Hawke was crammed into an armchair in Anders’ living room (which existed in a level of chaos that seemed unfathomable) while Anders made pungent Turkish coffee in chipped mugs. Fenris perched on the edge of the couch, staring at the overweight tabby cat dozing on its back in a block of sunlight on the floor. The windowpanes were slightly warped and they rattled arrhythmically in the winter wind. It put Fenris on edge.

“I’m sure this is a rather rhetorical question,” Anders said to Hawke as he emerged from the kitchen, “but you do realize how absolutely fucking insane you sound, don’t you? Even to me, and I _believe_ in this kind of shit.”

“Aveline thoroughly informed me of it, yes.” Hawke accepted a mug of coffee but didn’t drink. The stuff smelled like tar.

“Okay. Well, that’s good, I suppose. As long as that’s out of the way.”

Fenris rested his elbows on his knees, watching as Anders shoved aside a few stacks of water-stained papers and a shoebox filled with pens. “I’ve seen what he can do. It defies explanation.”

Anders fixed Fenris with a critical stare, weighing these words and seemingly finding them wanting. “Have you documented it? Any of it?”

“No.”

“Of course not,” Anders sighed. Fenris scowled at the floor. “Can you show me the… the thing you do, then?”

“Er,” Hawke said, scratching at his beard. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Anders raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“I haven’t been able to control it,” Hawke told him. He flexed his fingers experimentally, studying the spots on his knuckles where the skin was dry and cracked. “I could at first. It started out as a trickle -- just a spark -- and now when I tap it, it’s like a flood. I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he added, the guilt so thick that even Fenris winced.

“Ah, right. Aveline told me you burned Fenris.”

“It was nothing,” Fenris said sharply, straightening up from his slouch in annoyance. He’d warned Hawke against telling too many people about what was going on, and now it was being passed around like gossip. Even if she hadn’t believed what she’d heard, Fenris had trusted Aveline to keep it to herself. _Stupid._

“It _wasn’t_ nothing!” Hawke scrubbed his hands over his face with a loud exhale. “It just... makes me nervous.”

Anders picked up his phone and dialed something. When he turned the phone around so its screen faced Hawke, it read 9-1-1 in large numbers. “There. If you light anything on fire or kill either of us, just press the big green button here and the cops will be on their way. All right?”

Hawke groaned in exasperation but he seemed to be thinking about it. Finally, he stood up and walked several steps away from both Fenris and Anders until he was all the way at the other end of the room. “Okay,” he said. He bit his lip. “Okay. Don’t come close to me.”

A moment later, the air prickled Fenris’ skin. The cat skittered under the couch, its ears laid flat in displeasure. Hawke’s hands were held in front of him in half-fists and his eyes were lidded, almost as if he were in trance. With a high-pitched buzz that made Fenris’ teeth ache, Hawke’s forearms wreathed themselves in forked tongues of crackling light, climbing up his wrists and dancing over his fingertips.

“Holy shit,” Anders breathed. “Holy shit. Holy _fucking_ shit.”

They shone brighter than Fenris had ever seen them and they were thicker too, no longer delicate threads but instead pulsating white-hot veins, licking at the air dangerously. They writhed, desperate and sensual, as though they longed to jump from his hands.

Anders gaped.

Fenris knew that it was not an appropriate time for an _I told you so_ , and he still couldn’t shake the lingering sour taste of fear that Hawke was being so public about what he could do… But as he looked at Hawke, glowing like an otherworldly vision, he could not help the strange swell in his chest that felt almost like pride. No, not pride -- there was another word for it; he reached out, fingers scraping in the dark, but he could not name the feeling.

“I can’t believe…” Anders took a few reverent steps toward Hawke, his hand cupped to his mouth. As if in response, the veins of electricity surged. Each time they split it made a sound like cracking ice, and the singed air began to smell like sulphur. A little alarm bell went off in Fenris’ head.

“Hawke,” Fenris said. “ _Hawke._ ” Again. Louder.

Blinking, Hawke shook himself and the lines of light blinked out one by one. “Thanks,” he murmured to Fenris, slightly disoriented.

“Well,” Anders said, his jaw slack, shaking his head in disbelief. He didn’t say anything else for quite a while.

It wasn’t the first time he’d heard of this kind of thing, Anders told them once he’d recovered. There was folklore, of course. Myths and legends about magic. “The storybook stuff,” he said. “Wizards and witches and whatnot.”

But there was _more_ than that.

“Separating the weirdos from the real thing is like finding a particularly small needle in a particularly crazy haystack,” Anders said. “I've always been curious about occultism and the paranormal, so I've spent a lot of time researching it -- and I’ve interviewed a whole hell of a lot of weirdos. I even hunted down every piece of fringe literature I could find on the subject, and there are at least a few common threads tying together the believable stories.” He shuffled excitedly through a bookcase that sagged under the heft of its contents: dictionaries, history books, textbooks, and dozens of journals filled cover to cover with Anders’ chicken-scratch handwriting. Most of the notebooks were labeled with shorthand that Fenris couldn’t decode, but it seemed like a second language to Anders, who inspected and discarded many of them before he found what he was looking for.

“So, first,” Anders said, flipping through his notes and jabbing at the air with a scholarly finger, “most of the people I spoke to told me that this thing runs in families. They learned it from their mom or their weird uncle or what-have-you.”

Hawke had returned to his armchair but it was too small to accommodate the entirety of his ridiculous body, so his long legs were splayed out in front of him. He was staring down at his hands in his lap. “Well, that’s a strike against me, I suppose. Disappointingly pedestrian family.”

Anders hummed in thought as he skimmed his own words. “Seems like it presents early in life -- before puberty, maybe.”

“Strike two.” Hawke looked perplexed. “I didn’t start throwing off sparks until last month.”

“Lastly, there’s this.” Anders stepped over Hawke’s sprawled feet and presented his notebook; Fenris stood behind the armchair, craning his neck to look. “I don’t know what this is, exactly, but it was described over and over by people who claimed to be able to do… what you can do.”

Scrawled on the page was a logo or a crest of some sort, crude but recognizable as an upright sword, its tip pointing to the heavens and surrounded by a corona of flame.

“Well, that’s ominous,” Fenris said dryly.

“What’s this thing supposed to be?” Hawke asked.

Anders paced a small, anxious half-circle. “Fuck if I know, honestly. A sigil, maybe?”

Hawke shook his head, not understanding.

“A sigil is like a sign or a seal,” Anders said, “one that has some kind of magical power. Occult stuff.”

Fenris frowned deeply and Aveline’s warning rattled at the back of his mind. _Don’t let it get too weird._ At this point, they had confidently waltzed way past weird. Insistent, he tugged at Hawke’s shirtsleeve.

Hawke glanced up at him, expression a little dazed.

 _Let’s go,_ Fenris mouthed, then jerked his chin toward the door.

“One minute,” Hawke murmured. “Just one more minute, that’s all.”

Staring at the strange drawing in consternation, he lifted his hips off the chair so he could fish around in his back pocket for a familiar leather-bound journal -- the dream journal that Fenris had given him. He flipped quickly to an empty page and copied the mysterious symbol stroke for stroke.

“Look,” Anders began, using his Journalist Voice, “we’re dealing with something incredible here.”

 _We?_ thought Fenris, tamping down his agitation. _Who is we?_

“I’ve been chasing after solid proof of supernatural phenomena like this for -- Christ, for _years,_ ” Anders said, chewing at his thumbnail and studying Hawke. “I didn’t think I’d ever find it. This thing you can do, the electricity? This is a big deal. Huge.”

“Then help me,” Hawke said. “Help me figure out how to control it. I don’t trust it.”

Anders nodded. “I’ll do the best I can.”

“And _we,_ ” Fenris said carefully, “should keep this to ourselves until we understand the full scope of it, whatever it is.”

Hawke let the journal drop closed, and the sigil, drawn in his heavy-handed ink lines, disappeared from view with the soft sound of shuffling paper.


End file.
